


Rest for the Weary

by AMarguerite



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Gen, Medical School
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-12
Updated: 2015-02-12
Packaged: 2018-03-12 01:52:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 832
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3339377
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AMarguerite/pseuds/AMarguerite
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Joly is mystified by Combeferre's timetable. How does a fellow medical student have time to study everything Combeferre does?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rest for the Weary

**Author's Note:**

  * For [darthfar](https://archiveofourown.org/users/darthfar/gifts).



Joly was mystified by many things— the earth’s magnetic poles, the nature of light (a wave or a particle?), the complexities of the human body— but nothing mystified him more than Combeferre.

The rigors of the medical school were such that, outside of taking Musichetta to the theatre or the countryside on the weekends or drinking with Bossuet, Joly spent all his time either in class or preparing for it. 

Combeferre, however, read everything, went to the theaters, attended the courses of public lecturers, learned the polarization of light from Arago, grew enthusiastic over a lesson in which Geoffrey Sainte-Hilaire explained the double function of the external carotid artery, and the internal, the one which makes the face, and the one which makes the brain; he kept up with what was going on, followed science step by step, compared Saint-Simon with Fourier, deciphered hieroglyphics, broke the pebble which he found and reasoned on geology, drew from memory a silkworm moth, pointed out the faulty French in the Dictionary of the Academy, studied Puysegur and Deleuze, affirmed nothing, not even miracles; denied nothing, not even ghosts; turned over the files of the  _Moniteur_ , reflected.

“How is it possible?” Joly lamented, after he’d had to cancel plans with Courfeyrac and Bahorel yet again because he was falling behind in anatomy. “How does Combeferre do it? I accept the reality that he is much smarter than I am, but I cannot recall when I last had time to read a newspaper.”

“Perhaps Combeferre does not deny ghosts because he is an alchemist,” replied Bossuet, whom Joly only saw regularly because Bossuet lived with him, “and can transmute gold into time.”

This began to seem reasonable. The next time Joly spotted Combeferre at the medical school Combeferre exclaimed, “Joly! Have you ever considered how extraordinary it would be if we had a system of trains around France as extensive as the canals?”

Recently, Joly had considered whether or not all the coffee he drank to keep himself awake was causing him to hallucinate. He had had no time what-so-ever to devote to a theoretical railway system.

Combeferre clearly moved on a different plane of existence.

The next free evening he got, Joly brought the Problem of Combeferre to Jehan, Bahorel, Courfeyrac, and Bossuet, hoping that a poet and three men who refused to be lawyers might have the necessary ability to think beyond the realms of the physical. Joly had occupied himself chiefly with questions of anatomy for the past trimester; it stood to reason that he was too occupied with the physical to figure out Combeferre’s metaphysically puzzling schedule.

“He multitasks in a most peculiar fashion,” suggested Bossuet. “Perhaps he thinks about trains while listening to lectures, or studies etymology while at the opera?”

“He has no mistress,” suggested Bahorel. “That is all the answer one needs.”

“But he has his friends,” replied Joly, “and I think we take up more of his time than any mistress would.”

“Perhaps he reads at twice the speed of an ordinary man,” suggested Courfeyrac, “and reasons at three times the speed of one.”

“I think he’s created a Frankenstein’s monster of himself,” said Jehan, more seriously than the suggestion warranted, “and sends it to lectures at the  _Jardin des plantes_  while he is at lectures at the medical school.”

But after a few drinks and a few more fruitless theories, Joly was entirely willing to believe that Jehan was right.

Words were suddenly difficult but Joly managed to get out, “He’s so… Combeferre is so… He’s just so _smart_. He could build a second self out of body parts taken from the anatomy department.”

In a soberer mood Joly decided that this was part of the answer. (Not the body parts, but the intelligence.) Combeferre had a prodigious memory and seldom needed something explained to him twice. He did not need to study as often as other students did. Joly, who still could not name all the bones of the hand, deeply envied him for it.

The actual answer was Enjolas’s contribution. “Combeferre doesn’t sleep,” he said, overhearing the speculation from the less focused corner of the back room.

"What?" asked Jehan, a little disappointed in so prosaic an answer.

"Combeferre only sleeps four hours a night at most," replied Enjolras. "It has been that way since boarding school.”

So when Combeferre saw Joly drooping over his notes later that evening, and said, “You must get as much sleep as you can before you get an _internat_ and are forced to be on call through the night,” Joly hid a grin. It was the gentlest hypocrisy, a character flaw that rather endeared Combeferre to one than otherwise. So, when five minutes later Combeferre was snoring over his textbooks, Joly virtuously shouted in Combeferre’s ear, “Wake up! You have lost the hour you would normally dedicate to copy-editing the dictionary!”

“Thank you,” said Combeferre, a little disoriented.

“You are welcome,” Joly replied, and went to Musichetta’s bed extremely content.


End file.
